


Hold

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: hold you on the way down [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Planet, Depression, M/M, Unrequited Love, house arrest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After more than a week of observations and interviews and evaluations, after multiple sworn statements from Steve and Sam and Natasha, after the frankly disgusting and unethical implantation of those tracking devices, it was all over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to verity for making me write this AND making it better, and to Iulia and sophia_sol for hand-holding.

It was one of those days that made Steve wonder if he could choose a best day of his life. After more than a week of observations and interviews and evaluations, after multiple sworn statements from himself and Sam and Natasha, after the frankly disgusting and unethical implantation of those tracking devices, it was all over. He and Bucky were driven from Fort Meade to Steve's apartment in an unmarked black SUV, escorted inside by a squad of MPs, and finally turned loose. 

Bucky might be under house arrest, but he was _home_. He was out of that unofficial prison, free of his Hydra conditioning, safe, and _with Steve_. 

Steve couldn't help noticing, also, that he was as beautiful as he'd ever been, but he didn't let himself dwell on that thought too much. Now wasn't the time. Later, when this house arrest business was over and Bucky was really recovered, maybe--but today was still the best day Steve had had in a long time. He'd be sleeping under the same roof with Bucky tonight. 

He couldn't stop smiling, and Bucky broke out of the quiet daze he'd seemed to be in throughout his debriefing to smile back.

"Welcome home," Steve said. "We should do something special to celebrate. What do you want for dinner?"

Bucky kept on smiling through the pause he always took now before speaking. It was like he had to translate English in his head, or like he was being careful to give the correct answer, Steve wasn't sure. But his teeth flashed bright when he finally said, "You gonna make me eat your cooking, Rogers?"

Steve barked a laugh. He was still Bucky, under it all. He was going to be all right.

"I wouldn't do that to you, Buck," Steve promised, slinging an arm around him and tugging him toward the kitchen. "I got takeout menus, you can get anything you want delivered in this town. Come on, your choice."

* * *

Bucky got kind of obsessed with Animal Planet, but Steve didn't mind. It was a channel where nothing ever exploded and no one got shot; there was rarely even any yelling. It made a pleasant background noise, and sometimes Steve found himself watching it with Bucky, the same way he got sucked into YouTube spirals sometimes. 

He found that he was compiling a list of puppy videos to show to Bucky when Bucky was ready to be introduced to the internet. He hadn't asked any questions about that kind of thing yet, but Steve knew he would. He just needed some time to rest, and in the meantime Bucky had all the puppy videos he could want on the television.

* * *

Bucky had been home for a week when he stepped out of the bathroom clean shaven, his hair falling around his face in damp strands, the towel wrapped around his hips leaving most of him distractingly on display. 

Bucky broke stride when he saw Steve looking at him, and then he smiled a little, spreading his arms in such a familiar gesture that Steve could hear what he would have said on a more talkative day: _Well? How do I look?_

Steve couldn't resist reaching out to touch his bare cheek. Bucky didn't look younger, exactly, with his hair gone--there was a weariness in Bucky's eyes that had already been there in the year before he died, and that hadn't budged--but he looked present, available. Touchable. 

Steve's gaze dropped to Bucky's mouth and caught there. He'd seen Bucky's lips what felt like every day of his life (every day of his life he'd really seen anything at all) but they looked new and startling today. Like Steve could lean in and--

Steve jerked back, realizing what he'd been thinking, almost doing. He reached for something to say to remind himself that it wasn't going to be like that, not now and probably not ever: Bucky had always been interested in women. 

"Natasha will like that," Steve tried, although Natasha had never given much of a sign of liking anything about Bucky. "You've actually got a face under there."

Bucky frowned a little--Bucky had never shown any sign of liking anything about Natasha, either--and his expression turned wary and closed off despite the exposed skin.

Bucky didn't shave the next day. Steve couldn't help seeing the familiar shadow of stubble as a porcupine's spikes or a barbed wire fortification. _Keep out_.

Steve kept his hands to himself after that, and tried like hell not to think of Bucky in ways he shouldn't.

* * *

Steve felt guilty every time he left to go running, knowing Bucky couldn't. He always went early, while Bucky was still asleep; Bucky slept a lot these days, sometimes dozing on the couch in front of Animal Planet. 

That had to be part of recovering, Steve figured. He remembered the weeks and months of his life he'd spent weak as a kitten recovering from one bout of sickness or another, drifting in and out of sleep. Bucky had been there as often as not, bringing him food and comics and neighborhood gossip. Steve tried to do the same for Bucky, although Bucky didn't know the neighborhood enough to take much of an interest in the gossip, even when it was about Natasha or Sam. Bucky hadn't really had a chance to get to know them, though. That would come later, Steve was sure. When Bucky was ready.

Steve kept waiting for Bucky to get bored and frustrated with his confinement. He had a million plans for ways to make Bucky feel a part of things while he was stuck at Steve's place--and a million more plans for how Bucky could actually be a part of things, once they'd managed to convince the authorities that Bucky could be let out of Steve's apartment--but day after day Bucky slept late and watched Animal Planet and picked warily at his meals, like he expected something in them to explode in his mouth.

"Do you want something different?" Steve asked once. "Is there--Russian food, maybe? Were there... different things you usually ate, before?"

Bucky frowned, shook his head, and took another bite of a french fry. He touched his nose tentatively, like it was sore, then his throat, then his nose again. 

"There was a tube," he said after a while, looking down at his food. "In my nose? I didn't have to eat."

"Oh," Steve said, and thought about getting smoothie recipes from Tony--he could avoid mentioning that he was asking for Bucky--but he couldn't decide whether that would be better or worse. Bucky _was_ eating, after all. It was just another thing he was learning again. It would take time.

Bucky rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, picked up another french fry, took another bite.

* * *

Every time he left his apartment--whether for a run, or lunch with Sam, or to visit Peggy, or to go up to New York to pitch in on something with the Avengers--Steve could only think _Bucky should be here, Bucky should be a part of this_. 

Bucky had been home a couple of months--still not better yet, still not cleared to leave the apartment even if he'd been scratching at the walls to escape--when Steve found himself speaking his hope out loud to Sam one morning while they were cooling down after run on the grass by the Smithsonian. He couldn't say it to Bucky, and he needed someone else to see the possibility with him, to agree that there was some kind of chance.

"I think," Steve said. "after we've gotten the military and the CIA to declare him not a threat.... He could work with us, you know? He has the skill set."

Sam looked up at Steve from where he was lying on the grass, and the expression on his face was careful, neutral, and Steve had seen it enough times to brace himself.

"Maybe he doesn't want to kill people anymore," Sam said.

Steve gritted his teeth and didn't say anything, fighting down a burst of rage all out of proportion with Sam's mild words. Steve didn't go up to New York to _kill people_ , even if what he did wound up involving lethal force a fair amount of the time. Steve didn't like killing people. He didn't _want to kill people_ , but he did a job, an important job--a job Sam hadn't wanted to do anymore once they found Bucky.

It was a job Bucky had never shown much interest in beyond saying _good luck_ every time Steve left. The few times Steve had called to check on him when he had to leave, Bucky's end of the line had been mostly silence, punctuated occasionally with the same five commercials that aired every twelve minutes on Animal Planet, several decibels louder than the actual programming. Steve could have extolled the virtues of Pedigree Brand Dog Food in his sleep. 

A week after he tried to talk to Sam, Steve had to go up to New York again. He spent the first day consciously not calling to check on Bucky, thinking _Bucky should be here_ and then thinking of Sam saying neutrally, _Maybe he doesn't want to kill people anymore_.

The second day he only thought of the mission.

The third day, he woke up in the apartment Tony had built for him in Stark Tower--a whole floor, really--and took the stairs all the way up to the roof deck to look out at New York and breathe the almost-fresh city air as the sun came up. 

Natasha came out to stand beside him, and it was only when she smiled that Steve realized he was smiling too, and that it felt strange.

"You know," Natasha said casually, "the worst thing about being a prison guard is that you have to stay in a prison all the time."

Steve's smile dropped away like a stone dropped from the hundred and twelfth floor. Natasha's merely shrank into something sad but patient. She had tried to tell him that having custody of Bucky would be bad for him. He hadn't listened. Bucky belonged with him; that was all there was to it.

He belonged with Bucky too. He knew he did. Even if right now, standing here, he thought he'd rather dive to the bottom of the ocean than step foot inside his own apartment. Bucky was waiting for him. He had to go home.

* * *

Steve didn't know whether Bucky had gotten worse as a result of being left alone for three days, or if three days away--to say nothing of Natasha's remark--had made Bucky's condition more obvious, but it hurt to look at him after that. Steve kept waiting for him to speak, to smile, to even make eye contact. He didn't. He watched TV, and when he wasn't in front of the TV he watched Steve, not with interest but with a kind of blank fixation. Sometimes he didn't seem to be watching anything at all.

He ate when Steve put food in front of him; he made clock-regular trips to the bathroom. He showered about forty-five minutes after Steve showered, no matter when Steve decided to take a shower. 

It was only in the last few weeks that Bucky had started to seem to have bad dreams, making little anxious noises sometimes in his sleep. Before his most recent trip to New York, Steve had let him be. Now, he went into Bucky's room at the first sound of distress, mostly because it was the first sound he'd heard Bucky make in days.

He crouched next to the bed. Bucky's face was, for once, not expressionless, but it was twisted into a mask of terror. 

"No," Bucky was saying. "Please, no, don't--"

"Buck," Steve said, and his own voice shook. 

He reached out a hand, wanting to wake him, but Bucky flinched away before Steve could touch him.

"Steve," Bucky said, and despite everything warmth bloomed in Steve's chest at the sound of his name in Bucky's mouth. It was only on the second repeat that he caught the tone of it: fearful, pleading. "Steve, no no, Steve, please, _Steve don't_ \--"

Steve drew his hand back, plastering it over his mouth as he watched Bucky curl away from him, babbling his name over and over, terrified. Terrified _of him_.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thought, but he couldn't have made a sound if he wanted to. Maybe there was some conservation of voice, between them; maybe Bucky could only speak when Steve was silent. _Oh God, Buck, I'm sorry, I don't know why I didn't see it sooner, I'm so sorry._

It got worse: the tenor of Bucky's voice changed from fear to _pain_. Steve resorted to trying to wake him, shaking him by the shoulder while tears rolled down his face, but all that did was make Bucky's words dissolve into wordless cries. Steve backed off again and stayed there by his bed, keeping vigil, until Bucky went as abruptly silent as if he'd been gagged.

Bucky's eyes opened, and for the first time in God knew how long, Steve thought Bucky was actually seeing him. He didn't move or speak, but he was looking at Steve with some kind of awareness. For once it mattered what Steve said to him.

"I'm sorry," Steve said softly, keeping his voice steady with an effort like nothing else. "Bucky, I'm so sorry."

Bucky shook his head slightly. After a pause--like he had to translate, like he had to give the right answer, like his voice was being transmitted from a million miles away--Bucky said expressionlessly, "Good luck."

Bucky's eyes closed again, and Steve let himself crumple flat on the floor under the weight of the last three months.

* * *

Steve felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean, moving in the dark and cold under crushing pressure. It took him a long time to get moving; Bucky was sitting on the couch watching Animal Planet by the time Steve was ready to go out.

Steve went to the only place he knew to go when he was all out of options and desperately in need of help. He went to Sam.

Sam, of course, was busy. Steve waited through the end of the group meeting Sam was leading, and when it was over Sam took one look at Steve and hustled him into an office, seated Steve at his own desk. 

"What is it?" Sam asked, his voice low and intense, vibrating with tension. "Is there--do you need me to--?"

Steve wanted to be able to say _Yes_. He wanted to be able to tell Sam that he needed backup, needed him in the game. Steve wanted something he could fight, someone to kill to fix this, but there was nothing.

"Bucky," he said quietly. "It's just Bucky."

* * *

The security precautions for Bucky's first therapy session--the first time someone not a superhero was allowed in his presence since his debriefing--made it infuriatingly obvious that everyone who'd mandated Bucky's house arrest would have been happier for him to stay catatonic on the couch forever than to ever get well. Steve spent the entire hour while Bucky was in his bedroom with Dr. Palmer venting to Natasha about the SWAT team in the apartment across the hall, the stab vest and taser the doctor had been equipped with, the frankly insulting insistence that he and Natasha both be in the apartment--

Natasha was smiling behind her fingers, not really bothering to hide her expression.

"What," Steve demanded. 

"You haven't gotten righteously indignant like this in months," Natasha said. "This is progress."

* * *

At eight o'clock something beeped in Bucky's pocket and he turned the TV off, shaking his head like he was coming up from underwater. He went into his bedroom, coming back out to sit at the kitchen table with a pencil and a sheet of paper.

Steve wandered over to sit across from him; the paper seemed to be a worksheet.

Bucky glanced across at him. His lips moved around the shapes of silent words, and then he said haltingly, "Martha says I have to have a goal. Something I want."

Steve nodded slowly, trying to remember the last time Bucky had spoken to him without being prompted. Bucky was already looking down at the page again, his hair falling down to hide his face from Steve.

Steve tried to imagine someone handing him the same worksheet. Sam had asked him that, months ago. _What do you want to do? What makes you happy?_

Steve had said he didn't know, but there was an answer that he was still carrying around, one that got harder and harder to speak out loud. There was hardly anyone left who would understand what he meant by it. _I want to win the war._

The one he'd thought he was fighting, back then, had ended without him, or had never ended, or might never end. He wanted to keep fighting for as long as he could--against Hydra, against whatever had taken Bucky away from him, against all the bad guys out there. 

And he didn't want to fight alone. He wanted his team with him. He wanted _Bucky_ with him, but also Natasha, and Sam, and Tony and Clint and Bruce and Thor, Nick and Maria and Sharon. Peggy. He wanted to be part of an army; he wanted to share his mission with the people around him. 

And someday he wanted the mission to end. He wanted to be able to move on into the future--not the another new year, not the next leap forward in technology, but whatever came after the war. He wanted--

Bucky picked up the pencil and began to write. He erased a string of Cyrillic characters, exhaled sharply through his nose, and started over. 

Steve studied the shape of Bucky's fingers, curled awkwardly around the pencil, holding one for probably the first time since 1945. All hope, all desire had been burned from him, stolen from him, in the long cold decades since, but after all that, Bucky had found it in himself to want something, and to express what he wanted. Steve would be the first to know what it was. He could barely breathe.

Slowly, laboriously, Bucky wrote out: _I want to pet a sloth._


End file.
